come drive with me

wow... this might qualify as a record number of posts for me in one day. what can i say? i'm on a roll. isabel inspired me to document my drive to work in pictures, so today, i took my camera to work with me. rather than get as many interesting pictures as she had in her post, i ended up taking pictures of what i love most about my drive every day: the clouds. i've always been a sucker for cool clouds. it reminds me how great God really is when i see how beautiful and ever-changing these clouds are. i'm definitely not a professional photographer, but i hope these are enjoyable for you.

here's a funny guy that sits in front of a fountain shop:

here i am enjoying the drive:

and here is my ipod, probably playing trans-siberian orchestra. yes, i do listen to christmas music all year long. oh, and that's my $218 purse that i bought for $22.50... yup.

sometimes, vanity really hurts

in preparation for my wedding, i went through quite a few of the usual rituals: choosing the right hair style, getting some new make-up and getting a mani/pedi. what i consciously skipped, though, were the acrylic nails. i had always admired the look, but never wanted to ruin my natural nails. nor did i want to sit in the salon every two weeks or so to get fill-ins. unfortunately, i forgot my reasons for not getting acrylics in the days before my hubby came home from deployment. i call it temporary insanity due to the excitement of everything that was about to happen. i had a set of "pink and whites" put on my already decent looking nail beds and although i was near tears during the entire, painful process, i really loved the end product. i even kept up the nails until our trip to visit the in-laws in california, because i wanted to have my mother-in-law's nail lady apply "glitter nails." you see, we don't have glitter nails out here. i had never even heard of them until meeting my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. for those of you who don't know, they are basically french manicured nails, but instead of having the white at the end, it is glitter. and boy, do they have an insane amount of glitters to choose from. i chose a light pinkish glitter that was subtle. i loved those glitter nails and showed them off to anyone who would look.
i haven't had my nails done since then, and that was at the beginning of august. there are several reasons: i couldn't find anyone who could do the glitter nails again; my mother-in-law's nail lady told me to only go to people who use a certain product and no one uses it here; i really do like my natural nails and i want them back; i hate sitting in the nail salon and paying someone to do to my nails what i could do on my own (if you haven't seen isabel's post on giving yourself a french manicure, here it is); oh and i usually pay a really big tip because i just do... and i could be putting that money to much better use.
so not only have i not had my nails done since then, but i haven't had the nerve to go get the old nails taken off! oh, i've been filing them down like crazy so that they are super short and i've even buffed until exhausted, so that the acrylic parts of my nails are so thin that you can barely see that they are still attached. at least i thought that was the case. this weekend, while my hubby and i were running errands around town, he grabbed my hand, held it up so he could look at my nails closely and said, "what is that?" i sheepishly said, "my nails from when we went to california. i'm too chicken to take them off completely because i know that my nails will be super thin underneath, so i'm just trying to let them grow out." that explanation worked for him and he could care less. but now, i'm worried. you see, we have a wedding coming up near my hubby's alma mater, and i will be meeting tons of his friends that i've never met before. how on earth am i going to make my nails presentable? anyone have any suggestions?

our alarm system

in college, i once had a roommate who would get SO mad at me every morning. we had a 2-story dorm room and i had the entire second floor loft all to myself. for as long as i can remember, i've always woken up with the radio or some sort of music playing. in college, i continued this system and had a radio/buzzer alarm system where the radio would start playing about 15 minutes before the harsh buzzer jolted me out of dreamland. this particular roommate, however, could hear the radio from her bed on the first floor and would yell at me to turn it off. i tried setting it on the most quiet volume level, but it was to no avail. if i only set the buzzer alarm and not the radio, i would hit the snooze button for about an hour before finally getting out of bed. fortunately, we got along in all other aspects of daily life, but we could never come to an agreement over my method of waking up each morning.
in the back of my mind, i always wondered how this would one day affect my marriage. God totally had it all taken care of, because my husband hits the snooze button even longer than i do! he doesn't like the radio alarm, though, and if i ever let it play longer than a minute or two, he either nudges me or says my name until i turn it off. it amazes me how something that is so soothing to me can wake other people from a dead sleep more effectively than a buzzer alarm. anyhow, any given morning in our bedroom, you can hear each of our alarm clocks buzzing and then being snoozed...over and over again. next, the dog pitches in with his effort to wake us up. as soon as he hears the alarm, he gets up from his sprawled out position on the bathroom floor, picks up a toy (preferably a squeaky one) and immediately heads to my side of the bed to wag his tail as hard as he possibly can and try to convince me to take him for his morning run. i usually reach over and pat his head and rub his chest until he decides to lay down next to the bed and wait for the alarm to go off again. this goes on for about 30-45 minutes every morning. it's a system that works for our family and i love it. and can i just add that i have never, ever seen my husband wake up grumpy? no matter how little sleep he might have had, he always wakes up with a smile on his face. i love this about him and wish that i were the same way. if i happen to fall asleep on the couch at night and have to wake up to go to bed, i am so cranky. i'm trying to be more like him, but it certainly doesn't come naturally!

out of body experience

i had an out of body experience this weekend. no, i didn't go visit the girly doctor. i got a massage.
while my hubby was deployed, i went for a massage once a month to help alleviate some of the tension that built up while i worried about his safety. every month, i went to the same place and every time, i requested a female masseuse. in fact, i once desperately called at the last minute to see if they could fit me in, but they knowingly told me that there were no female masseuses available, only a male. i decided that i could live with my cramped neck muscles for one more day and waited for a woman. because of my scheduling history, i just assumed that they had it in my profile that i would only see a female for a massage.
fast forward to this weekend... my husband had been working 12-15 hour days and seriously needed to be kneaded on by someone other than me. the wifey can only do so much to ease my hubby's tensions. i picked up the phone and speed-dialed the same place that i had visited during his deployment. they were able to schedule us both for appointments at 5:00 saturday. perfect! when she told me who would be working on each of us, i was certain that she said two very girly names like "sasha" and "kristy" or something like that. turns out, my therapist was a man. a big man. with a sweat band around his head - dodgeball style. i did a double take when he walked into the waiting room and called my name, and then i looked to my hubby for support. could i possibly change my mind right now with all these people in the waiting room? could i feign a sudden migraine? or maybe shove my husband up there in my place and i would go with his masseuse? i'm embarrassed to say that i did none of the above and like a lamb being led to the slaughter, i dumbly followed this massive man back to the massage room. the entire time, i had an out of body experience like so many people describe their yearly girly doctor visits. i debated over just telling him to stop, or even kicking him really hard, pretending ti was just a reflex and then telling him that we should just reschedule. instead, i just kept hoping that it would be over soon. afterwards, i nearly strangled the receptionist who asked how my massage was. i silently wondered if she was the one who had scheduled my massage with the giant. i have vowed that next time a scheduling error like that happens, i will be the strong woman that i am and say that i simply cannot be massaged by any other male other than my husband. it just felt so wrong to me and i couldn't get out of that room fast enough. i didn't even enjoy the massage. i am happy to say, however, that my hubby's massage therapist worked wonders on the six, yes six, giant knots on his traps and back. she told him that he needs to get massages every week if possible. i guess i'll have to break out the massage oil and take care of my husband until he is back to normal!

lost: one fabulous coat

this weekend, i was in a bidding war with another individual for this great coat on ebay. need is not exactly the right word to use in this situation, so i'll be truthful and say that i really, really wanted it. i have a black, vintage swing coat with a fur collar that i wear when i get really dressed up, and i have a black, wool kenneth cole reaction coat that i wear every other day during the winter. which means i'm lacking a coat that fits the occasions between every-other-day and really-dressed-up. what those occasions might be and how often they might occur did not cross my mind. this beige hilary radley totally fit the bill, but when the auction got up to $120 i stuttered in my bidding, wondering whether i really wanted to explain to the hubby why i had purchased yet another coat for our mild winters when i had two perfectly good coats taking up valuable space in our snug closet. with ten seconds left in the auction, i suddenly decided that, yes, this coat was worth more than $120 to me and i would bid higher. too late. an overly eager bidder who i'm not too happy with right now won the coat for $124.50. and after getting attached to this coat during the 2 days that i spent considering bidding and then actually bidding, i can't find another one like it anywhere. if any of you have one like it that you would like to sell, let me know!

just bragging

last night, when the hubby got home, he had a dozen red roses in his hands for me. wow! what a sweetheart. while talking about what we wanted to do for the night, i jokingly suggested that we go dress shopping (for the wedding). not only did he not laugh, he willingly agreed! i was actually excited, because i can trust him to give me an honest opinion without sugar-coating it. you see, i had gone dress shopping at lunch and had been completely unsuccessful and was slightly frustrated. i had even found the black dress that i had asked for your opinions of, and it was marked down 75%, but it was a little too casual once i saw the fabric... plus, they didn't have my size. the hubby and i went to the mall and into my favorite department store. it only took a few minutes for me to find about ten dresses to try on, but i just tried on three of them before i found the right dress. it is an adrianna papell occasions and it is a silk halter with beading on it. i'll have plenty of pictures after the wedding. i'm going to have to take him shopping with me all the time if it means that i always find what i need that fast! after getting the dress, we headed over to ted's montana grill for some yummy dinner and thoroughly enjoyed our night.

why can't you be like me?

several times while driving yesterday, i got pretty frustrated with the drivers around me. i mean, they were driving so dangerously and totally not concentrating on the road. and then, there was this one car who was driving under the speed limit. the nerve. oh, and i can't forget the driver who came speeding up on my bumper and must have been going at least 20 miles over the speed limit. my blood was definitely boiling as i found fault with every driver on the road. God must have sensed that i needed some help in the situation, because the question popped into my head, "well, how should these drivers be driving?" and i immediately thought that they should be driving like i was driving! wouldn't that make life easier? yeah right... i started thinking about the realities of it all. people driving 5 miles over the speed limit, playing with their ipod and trying to talk to their mom on the phone at the same time? that would be way more dangerous! suddenly, the drivers around me didn't seem so bad after all and i had a somewhat more peaceful drive home. until that guy in front of me slammed on his brakes...

black tie optional

we are going to a wedding at the end of this month and the attire is black tie optional. i love this dress, but i'm thinking that it is going to be too informal. any opinions?

my talented man

my husband is a very smart and talented man. i could go on and on about all of the amazing things that he can do, but there is one in particular that i just have to brag about right now. he can smell my breath anytime and know exactly what the last thing i ate was. you might think i just have bad breath, but that isn't the case at all! really! i could have had a glass of kefir 10 minutes before he gets home from work, and the second i say hello and give him a quick kiss, he kind of squints his eyes and thinks for a minute and then, "eww! you just had kefir!" (now let me say, if you have no idea what kefir is, run out to the grocery store right this instant and get some out of the yogurt section. you'll be glad you did. oh, but get a flavored kind and skip the plain) the hubby is working late tonight and i'm hoping he doesn't come home in the next couple of minutes, because i have to go brush my teeth and get rid of the smell of chocolate ice cream... which is what i just ate for dinner. mmmm.

rebel with a shopping cart

over the weekend, the hubby and i went to the commissary to do some grocery shopping. while i grabbed a shopping cart and pulled out my list, the hubby went next door to get a spiffy haircut. this definitely wasn't my first time shopping at the commissary, but it was the first time that i noticed something about the patrons in the store. because of the way the store is setup, everyone has to start out going up the same aisle, in the same direction. as people crossed off items from their grocery lists, they continued to walk down every single aisle. and because everyone started out on the same aisle and in the same direction, every aisle became like a one-way street, with everyone just trudging along the route that was planned for them by a military architect with a sick sense of humor. while deciding if the hubby would like kix or life cereal better, i looked around the cereal aisle and realized that i was with the same people that i had been shopping next to in the canned fruit & veggies aisle. immediately, i tossed the box of kix cereal in my shopping cart and did a u-turn. i spent the rest of my time trying to go against traffic. when my hubby finally caught up with me, i told him the story about how everyone was stuck in a rut and following each other down every aisle and he just looked at me with, "yeah, so? it's the military!" and that was the end of that discussion. but just between you and me, next time i go to the commissary, i'll be going down every aisle against the flow of traffic with a smile on my face. someone has to shake things up around this place and keep these military folk on their toes =)

a wifey's dream come true

yesterday, at costco, my hubby caught me drooling over a machine that i will forever dream of owning. it was this really cool steamer-iron-ironing board combination. guess how much it cost? just over $1,000! not a waste of money in my eyes, though. and this morning, while ironing my hubby's undershirts (our church is still relatively new and meets every other sunday), i came up with reason number 327 for owning that steamer-iron-ironing board for the low, low price of $1,000+: i can't dry my hubby's military uniforms with fabric softener, so they come out less soft than i'd like them to. i also can't iron them *sigh,* because of the material that they are made of. BUT, if i had the steamer-iron-ironing board combination system in my house, i could hang the uniforms on a hanger and then steam them and make them all nice and wrinkle-free and my hubby would look spiffy and smooth. well, he already does, but he would look even more spiffy and smooth and his buddies would probably pester him with questions about how he got his uniforms to be so amazingly wrinkle free and he would just smile and think about his $1,000+ well spent at costco.

workin' girl

my last post reminded me that i have yet to explain why/how/where i'm working. it's a quick story, really. before i moved away to marry my hero of a hubby, i worked for an awesome homebuilding company and had a killer of a job. unfortunately, they didn't have an office in the city that my hubby brought me to, so i had to find a new job. that job lasted nearly a year and then i decided to spend lots of quality time with my hubby and bozeman. fast forward to sometime in july, when my former boss from the really cool company called me and asked if i would consider helping them out in a teeny-tiny office that they had set up in our town. i had already told the company that the military would be moving us away in a few months, but that didn't deter them and they offered to let me do it on a contract basis, so the hubby and i took 2 or 3 weeks to discuss the pros and cons. we eventually came to the conclusion that i would go back to work until we move. and i'm glad that we did, because i'm loving it... except for the bathroom facilities in the office.
did i mention that this is a teeny-tiny office? well, we are actually in a warehouse and we have contractors coming in and out all day long. way in the back of the warehouse is a single, teensy bathroom. i'm not sure how many years it has been since it was cleaned, but i'm guessing that i wasn't legal the last time it was scrubbed. oh, and the toilet seat is always up when i go back there, because i'm the only woman in this place. seriously. the first week that i was in the office, i tried to dehydrate myself so i wouldn't have to use the bathroom all day long. well, my husband opened my eyes to how stupid of an idea that was, so i've had to get creative. my desk is stocked with antibacterial wipes and antibacterial hand sanitizer and if people could see what goes on behind closed doors in that bathroom when i'm in it, they'd laugh their socks off. i don't touch a thing without toilet paper or paper towels covering my hands. i choose my lunchtime destinations based on their restroom facilities. when i go to the cafe down the street i breathe a sigh of relief, because they have two bathrooms - one for the women and one for the men! it's a breath of fresh air. literally.
all sarcasm aside, i love the job and the people in this company. i do miss visiting my hubby for lunch, but there will be more time for that in the future =)

slip time

during my five year college stint (which, thankfully, ended with graduation), i worked for an engineering firm in the big city. even though i only started as an intern, i always tried to dress like a professional. this included cramming my giant size 11 feet into black, pointy-toed pumps. to this day, i still love wearing black pumps... i'm even wearing them as i write this. anyhow, as you big city girls know, being a high-heeled pedestrian in a high traffic area takes some finesse. there are times when the crosswalk sign is blatently telling you to stand still, but you can see that the SUV headed in your direction is clearly lost and driving well under the speed limit and you decide to risk running across the street. as a runner who had fallen face first in the crosswalk in front of traffic (more than once), i decided that i should give myself at least 2 more seconds to cross the road in heels in case i slipped. for friends and co-workers who walked with me, i started to call it "slip time." i would casually explain to them that the reason i waited longer to cross the road was because there wasn't enough time for me to slip, gracefully get back up and still miss getting run over by a car. and now you, my blog readers, have the opportunity to use my phrase next time you are dressed up and hesitating at the crosswalk. stop and say to yourself, "hmm... is there enough slip time for me to make it across the road?"